The Delhi government has formed an eight-member society to aid and advise it on the setting up of a universal healthcare insurance cover for the state’s residents.

Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain is the chairperson of the “Society for Universal Healthcare in Delhi”.

Six experts from health insurance, economics, finance or management, entrepreneur and the NGO sector will be nominated to the society to help set up a ‘transparent and competitive’ public-private-partnership model for reducing costs and improving efficiencies.

The memorandum of association specifies that the governing body will have not less than seven and more than 15 members, who will plan, formulate, implement and monitor schemes and programmes for provision of affordable healthcare insurance for Delhi residents.

The society will digitise the health data of all citizens and empanel public and private hospitals, labs and healthcare providers.

“We are looking at almost 80-90% of the private hospitals across Delhi being empanelled under this scheme. All hospitals, especially the four or five big ones with high tariff that still run at full capacity, will not like to join,” he said.

Earlier this year, the health minister had said that the government was planning a family insurance scheme which will provide a cover of `1 lakh for almost all illnesses that require hospitalisation and Rs 2 lakh – Rs 4 lakh cover for critical illnesses. The list of critical illnesses will include 1,700 – 1,800 conditions.

“We have studied many such state-sponsored insurance schemes and we are trying to come up with the best model. We can learn from the mistakes of the other governments,” Jain had said. Depending on the socio-economic condition, the premium of the insurance will vary between Rs 0 and Rs 2,000- Rs 3,000 per annum, he had said.

Apart from this, the government is also looking into providing accident cover to all Delhi residents.